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How does a "better quality" HDMI cable deliver a better 0 or 1? Is the 0 more round with Monster cable, the 1 more straight? I always enjoy the arguments from uneducated consumers around HDMI cables. Maybe the better quality ones are more durable, or they have better shielding, but no one will ever convince me that a Monster cable brand can do better than a equivalent Monoprice cable. Gauge is gauge, jacket is jacket. Go with a decent gauge Monoprice cable and never look back.

How does a "better quality" HDMI cable deliver a better 0 or 1? Is the 0 more round with Monster cable, the 1 more straight? I always enjoy the arguments from uneducated consumers around HDMI cables. Maybe the better quality ones are more durable, or they have better shielding, but no one will ever convince me that a Monster cable brand can do better than a equivalent Monoprice cable. Gauge is gauge, jacket is jacket. Go with a decent gauge Monoprice cable and never look back.

Well, if you match them up with digital speakers, on digital speaker stands and have an all digital coffee table, you can almost hear the difference!!

Went to Monoprice but didn't get the very cheapest ones. Since I needed 10' and 12' I spent an extra buck or two on the next larger wire (AWG) size. With twists and turns inside the cabinetry wanted to minimize the possiblity of any deterioration of the internal wires.

If I have one problem with Monoprice it's that their cables are sometimes too thick and heavy for certain applications and not flexible enough. It's because they are so well built.

I have monoprice flat hdmi cables in my walls. One 20' and one 30'. The ones between all my equipment are a mix of monoprice and amazon. Amazon I find to generally be a better deal due to the free shipping (plus it ships a lot faster to the east coast than monoprice)

Audio and video are different. For video, digital is definitely better, has to be. What you see when using an HDMI cable is exactly what is supposed to be seen. There can be no variation.

That's not exactly true... Although the signal is digital (as everyone always says, "1's and 0's") the signal going through the the HDMI cable is an analog representation of that digital signal - the 1's are represented by a specified voltage level and the 0's are represented by another specified voltage level, with a specified range of variations allowed for each. The signal must transition between those two values with a distinct "edge" between the two levels.

It's possible for a cable to have enough capacitance to resist the transition between the two levels and cause the "edge" to have too much slope or to slow down the transition enough that it never reaches one or the other level so that the receiving device doesn't detect the transition, causing error rates high enough to cause issues.

Of course, even the cheapest monoprice and blue jeans cables HDMI cables are more than good enough to not have these problems, especially for the relatively short runs most of us are using. I'm using both the cheap HDMI cables DirecTV used to provide with their DVRs and Monoprice cables w/o any issues!

Support for brands, namely Monoprice, other than Monster has truly enlightened me. I remain curious about Monster's strategy when it comes to their HDMI competition. To this end I have send Monster support the following.

"I've been a loyal Monster customer for over 15 years. Whether it is power protection, composite, component, audio, amd HDMI I've got them all. Now that it is time to purchase a couple of new HDMI's my research, including surveying 187 other audio video enthusiast, has shocked me. I am sorry to say that by far Monster is not the HDMI of choice. Monoprice is the overwhelming choice.

It is because of my long term loyalty that I must ask why should I stay with Monster HDMI's?"

Note that I do realize asking Monster to respond to such a query is most probably sheer folly. Knowing Monster's marketing history if a reply is received it will be filled with 'whiz bang' jargon.

My only defense for spending so much on Monster HDMI's is that their quality of pre-HDMI's cables hooked me on the brand.

It's not only Monster HDMI cables that are overpriced and don't work any better than any other similar device sold by other folks, it's their whole line of BS products. If they bought Toyota, you'd be paying $100,000 for a Prius. They just overprice everything they make and trust in the lemmings of this country to blindly follow the other uninformed lemmings and buy their stuff. You've just scratched the surface with the HDMI cables.

How does a "better quality" HDMI cable deliver a better 0 or 1? Is the 0 more round with Monster cable, the 1 more straight? I always enjoy the arguments from uneducated consumers around HDMI cables. Maybe the better quality ones are more durable, or they have better shielding, but no one will ever convince me that a Monster cable brand can do better than a equivalent Monoprice cable. Gauge is gauge, jacket is jacket. Go with a decent gauge Monoprice cable and never look back.

Guage is guage, but insulation (jacket as you refer to it) does make a difference in wiring. But, I've put monster cables (wiring) on every meter we had and could find no difference in the insulation. So your comparison does hold true, at least in my experience, as far as the cables go. Using that as a benchmark, I've assumed that the rest of the stuff they sell follows the same pattern. I've never bench tested a Monster HDMI cable, but I see absolutely no difference in PQ using the cheap HDMI cables I buy on Amazon than the horribly overpriced HDMI Monster cables.

Monster is the same BS that the audiophile people used with those 8 and 10 gauge power cables to plug in their amps costing hundreds of dollars. What the people buying them never bothered to realize, is that the wiring in the wall to the power box was still the same old unshielded thin wire. They would have been better off hardwiring their amp to the power box with romex for $30.

I have monoprice flat hdmi cables in my walls. One 20' and one 30'. The ones between all my equipment are a mix of monoprice and amazon. Amazon I find to generally be a better deal due to the free shipping (plus it ships a lot faster to the east coast than monoprice)

Monoprice does have some almost laughable shipping prices. I also have Amazon Prime and get my cabling and just about everything else from them.

Monster is the same BS that the audiophile people used with those 8 and 10 gauge power cables to plug in their amps costing hundreds of dollars. What the people buying them never bothered to realize, is that the wiring in the wall to the power box was still the same old unshielded thin wire. They would have been better off hardwiring their amp to the power box with romex for $30.

I know this makes me sound hypocritical, but I do use Monster wiring for my speakers for the most part, only because they are so flexible. I've looked for cheaper wire rolls that were as flexible, but haven't found any. I used to use Alpha wiring at work where the price didn't matter to me, but they are expensive too. So, occasionally, I pick up a hundred foot roll of Monster 14 gauge for about $60-$80 on sale, and hope no one I know sees me do it...

It's really not as flexible. I don't know how they get it that flexible, but it lies flat and seems to have no limitations on the radius of it's bends. As far as functionality goes, you are correct. But you bend 14AWG zip cord and it slowly reverts to it's original shape. I've even stripped SS cord and tried that on speakers and the wiring just isn't as flexible.

The cable snapped at the junction with the plug? Or it fell out of the port? Quite a difference! A plug fitting tight in a port doesn't necessarily mean it's robust.... just that it fits tight; same with reverse.

The Plug itself was still plugged into the device. The wire pulled out of the plug.

Definitely the cable was not a robust mechanical connection to the plugs.

Monoprice end of discussion. I used to buy monster, when i got a massive discount (or some for free) that made them the same prices as a monoprice cable, and they give me the same quality as the monoprice ones. the monster ones usually retailed for $100.00 or more that I got, vs say $10 at monoprice... What does that tell you?

Also, I have used on that is 100ft long from monoprice, and it did fine... I personally like their flat hdmi cables...

That's not exactly true... Although the signal is digital (as everyone always says, "1's and 0's") the signal going through the the HDMI cable is an analog representation of that digital signal - the 1's are represented by a specified voltage level and the 0's are represented by another specified voltage level, with a specified range of variations allowed for each. The signal must transition between those two values with a distinct "edge" between the two levels.

It's possible for a cable to have enough capacitance to resist the transition between the two levels and cause the "edge" to have too much slope or to slow down the transition enough that it never reaches one or the other level so that the receiving device doesn't detect the transition, causing error rates high enough to cause issues.

Of course, even the cheapest monoprice and blue jeans cables HDMI cables are more than good enough to not have these problems, especially for the relatively short runs most of us are using. I'm using both the cheap HDMI cables DirecTV used to provide with their DVRs and Monoprice cables w/o any issues!

That may all be true, but any issues in the signal will result in a pixel that is blank (generally white), not incorrect. As I have said, if the pixel is on, it is 100% correct. There simply cannot be any imperfection.

That may all be true, but any issues in the signal will result in a pixel that is blank (generally white), not incorrect. As I have said, if the pixel is on, it is 100% correct. There simply cannot be any imperfection.

It's practically impossible for there to be single-pixel errors in an HDMI signal. If the signal gets screwed up at all, it simply won't display.